ID: 248

Outcome: Narrow Victory

Open After Story: Yes

Manual Prompt: Yes

Text:

Some called fate a goddess. Others believed it to be cruel dice. But you knew better: fate was a pair of shears.



Nawfal ascended as this land's new Sultan, with you as his Vizier, enacting reforms that shook the empire to its core. The most radical: the total abolition of slavery, and a decree that noble's power would be measured by the number of free subjects in their domains.



These policies were right, striking at tyranny's root where some were stripped of all power while others hoarded too much.



Yet what is right is not always welcome.



Chaos spread. Some slaves didn't know the meaning of freedom and how to survive without their masters, slain by other slaves. Some slaves turned on freemen and nobles, who retaliated with private armies. Fields lay fallow. Workshops stood empty. All took to plundering!



Cities starved as supply lines collapsed. Petty nobles and urban freemen who had never owned slaves found their children crying with hunger. So they threw open the gates to rioters, blaming the Sultan for everything.



Then they came, bearing the last Sultan's banners. They dragged you and Sultan from your palace, beat you down, and strung you up on scaffolds built just for you.You didn't resist, not from guilt, but from bitter irony... and crushing disappointment.



The rope bit your wrists. The rabble poked your legs with spearpoints, laughing as you twisted in agony. Your death was made slow, you were thirst, hunger and in pain.



But Fate was a pair of shears.



When moonrise scattered the mob to taverns, shadowy figures overwhelmed your guards. They climbed the scaffold and cut you down with shears.



Half-dead, you were smuggled to the countryside, another corpse dangling in your clothes. Gentle hands stitched your wounds. They parted your cracked lips, pouring in milk and honey. A hundred souls had risked their lives silently...



All whom you'd ever helped. All who knew your true worth.



This was fate. Fate that severed ropes. Fate that cut the thread between malice and its prey. Fate that sheared misfortune. Fate was truly a pair of shears.

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